SKIING Miller down to one chance

He was sixth in the giant slalom on Monday. Saturday is the last Alpine event and his last medal hope.
SESTRIERE, Italy (AP) -- All those Olympic medals Bode Miller insists he can live without? Turns out he also believes they could just as easily be his.
Instead, they're going to other skiers -- and other countries.
Miller is down to one final chance at the Turin Games after tying for sixth in the giant slalom Monday, when Benjamin Raich ended his own string of Olympic disappointments by leading a gold-bronze Austrian finish.
Through four of five men's Alpine races, Miller has finished no better than fifth place in the downhill. He was leading the combined when he was disqualified; he didn't finish the super-G after slamming into a gate.
What-ifs
"If things went well," he said, "I could be sitting on four medals, maybe all of them gold."
Asked if a common thread could tie together his results at these games, Miller offered a race-by-race assessment.
In the downhill, he said, "the other guys just found more speed." He accepted "pilot error" as reasons for his problems in the combined and super-G. In the giant slalom, Miller said, he had "a little bit of bad luck" in the first run, when he hit a rock early, then made a trio of errors in the second.
After each run Monday, the 28-year-old from Franconia, N.H., doubled over, hands on knees, gasping for air.
"Against those guys right now," he acknowledged as he walked away from the hill and toward his private RV, "that won't do."
Twelfth after the opening giant slalom leg, Miller did ski a strong second leg. For several skiers, he even watched from the leader's perch at the bottom of the mountain, mugging for the camera, sticking his tongue out, chatting with another skier.
Then, one by one, Miller's rivals bested his time.
About Raich
Raich had the fastest second run and finished with a combined time of 2 minutes, 35 seconds on a course drenched in sun following two days of heavy snowfall. Joel Chenal was 0.07 back for France's second medal of the Olympics, and Austria's Hermann Maier boosted his personal take to two medals with the bronze, 0.16 off the pace.
Until Monday, Raich was having his own problems at Sestriere.
He wasn't picked for Austria's downhill squad, straddled a gate when he was seconds from gold in the combined and was 21st in the super-G. Still, he said he felt no extra pressure.
"I do not have to prove to anybody anymore that I know ski racing," said Raich, who won two bronzes at Salt Lake City four years ago.
About an hour after he and Maier won gold and bronze, Austria raised its Alpine haul to nine medals when Michaela Dorfmeister and Alexandra Meissnitzer finished 1-3 in the women's super-G, a few mountains away.
Ligety's the one
The United States, meanwhile, is stuck on one medal: Ted Ligety's gold in the men's combined. He'll be among the favorites in Saturday's slalom, the last Alpine event and Miller's last medal hope.
Over and over, Miller has said it's more important whether he feels good about a race than whether he was good enough to beat everybody else. He calls satisfying "my subjective criteria" his biggest concern -- rather than the "objective result" measured by the clock. It's more true to the Olympic spirit, he's said.
"He's of the mind-set he wants to inspire with great skiing," U.S. Alpine director Jesse Hunt said, "and he's not really focused on the results."